News

Ex-Bell official blames boss in corruption trial

The Associated Press

Posted:
11/13/2013 11:25:23 PM PST

Updated:
11/14/2013 05:53:27 PM PST

LOS ANGELES—The former assistant manager of Bell on Thursday denied blindsiding the City Council about huge raises that led to a corruption scandal, instead saying she only followed orders from her boss.

Angela Spaccia was cross-examined by prosecutors in her fifth day on the stand. She was asked about the lack of any reference in City Council agenda documents to raises for herself and City Manager Robert Rizzo that reached nearly 50 percent.

Spaccia acknowledged that she wrote out contracts with salary figures provided by Rizzo but didn't include them in the council meeting agenda packages. Instead, she gave them to Rizzo to include.

"I don't know what Mr. Rizzo did," she said. "I was not involved in creating the agenda."

"Why would I do anything more than I was instructed to?" she said.

The raises and those of other officials never received specific approval from the council. Instead, they were included obscurely under the section "supplemental revisions or amendments" in the city's five-year budget plan passed in 2005.

Authorities claim the pair looted the blue-collar community in southeast Los Angeles County by allotting themselves and other officials exorbitant salaries and benefits.

Spaccia and Rizzo were fired after disclosures that she was making $564,000 in pay and benefits annually while Rizzo was making about $1.18 million. Rizzo pleaded no contest to 69 corruption charges, leaving Spaccia to stand trial alone on 13 charges.

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Spaccia earlier insisted that she only learned about Rizzo's spending sprees on salaries only when the scandal broke in the Los Angeles Times.

"I didn't even believe it when I read it in the paper," she testified on Wednesday. "I thought I knew what was happening. But this was insane."

City Council members had six-figure salaries for sitting on commissions that did virtually nothing and the police chief was paid $457,000 a year for overseeing a small force in a 2.5-square-mile city with 35,000 residents, many of who lived below the federal poverty guidelines.